It takes nothing more than one click to lose a prospect. It’s even easier than losing your keys! What are your strategies to avoid that your subscribers lose interest in your business? Burying them under a flow of generic and boring emails is certainly not a good one. To do this, grouping your contacts into several possible groups could save you a lot of hassle. Segmentation is the first step towards an effective and relevant communication to captivate and engage your audience.
Don’t you know where to start? Discover 6 effective segmentation methods to inspire you!
The easiest way to segment your list is based on demographics like age, gender, language, employment level, etc. You don’t have to create different content for each segment. Knowing what your contact’s gender is, for example, will allow you to personalize some images in your email to make your target feel more related. In the following example, we have a header designed for women and one for men.
There are several other possibilities concerning demographic segmentation. For example, age. A person who is 25 years old at the beginning of his career will not have the same worries as a person who is 50 years old at the end of his career. So for a company in the financial industry, among other things, will not send the same content for each age group.
The same is true for many other industries such as tourism, where age generally has a strong influence on the type of trip people want to do. Or even in the fashion field where the collections will not be the same from one generation to the next!! In short, there are many possibilities.
If your communications are addressed to businesses, don’t hesitate to segment on the business type or industry to increase your message relevancy.
Indeed, your content will be different if it’s destined for a big company or a smaller one. Big business will, of course, have different needs from small businesses and their resources are also not the same. So, if you’re doing B2B, keep in mind that a large company probably has more employees and budget for the same solution than a small company but with less budget and fewer resources available (as a rule of thumb). Your offers will, therefore, have to be adapted on this point.
Also, the market in which businesses operate also influences your communications. For example, a company selling only on the Web will not have the same needs as a company with only physical stores. It’s also different between a company that sells products and a service company.
Your tone and message will also be different depending on the industry in which a company operates. You will indeed have to adapt your communications if you target retail companies instead of ones that work in the finance industry, for example.
Stop tormenting yourself trying to find the ideal frequency to send your emails. Make your life easier by directly asking your contacts the frequency they want to receive your emails when they subscribe. They will automatically fall into a particular segment. This way you reduce the risk of them being frustrated, especially if you send a lot of emails per week.
This can be done easily with a solution like Dialog Insight. You can set up a consent center that does it all automatically. Integrate an unsubscribe link and a link for profile modification in your communications and that’s it!
If you have physical stores, creating a geographic segmentation allows you to segment your customers by the closest store to send them personalized content by store.
You could also take advantage of a current event or even the weather to promote your content. Here’s a good example from RONA that took advantage of an announced snowstorm to promote its winter products. The email subject “Ready to face the snowstorm? ” was very appropriate for the region touched by the storm.
Segment your list based on the buying cycle to make sure you present the right content to the right person at the right time. A person who is at the very beginning of the buying cycle should not receive the same content as an already loyal customer. Your objective is different at each stage of the purchasing cycle, it is, therefore, natural to adapt your content sent, according to the progress of your prospects and customers.
Analyzing the behavior a person has on your website can help you determine the stage of the cycle she’s in. Look at what pages were visited, how long the visit lasted, what content was downloaded if a shopping cart was started, and then dropped?
The more a contact is at the end of the cycle, the more your offer has to be appealing. In the early stages, a nurturing sequence with value-added content will be preferred.
Either your contacts indicated their interests in a survey, in a form, by their click behavior in your emails or on your website, sending them relevant content aligned with their preferences will contribute to increasing their engagement.
This is one of the highest levels of segmentation because you can do anything with this data. From simple content customization to product recommendations, this is an extremely effective method of segmenting your database.
By analyzing your email results, you will also be able to target the contacts that have not shown interest in a certain time to reengage them. You can also target your most engaged contacts by giving them special offers to thank them for their loyalty.
The opportunities are vast. With such segmentation, you can explore the possibilities for a very long time and test several personalization techniques based on this criterion.
Conclusion
As you have seen, good segmentation is the basis for effective customization. Keep these 6 methods in mind and you’ll be on your way to fame! To help you, see our infographic to remind you of these 6 easy and effective segmentation methods.
Do you want to become a segmentation pro?
This infographics presents a summary of these 6 effective segmentation methods.
